


Waiting Game

by wolfwars



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-07-11 23:45:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7075576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfwars/pseuds/wolfwars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A different ending to 5x10. A MIX OF FLUFF AND AU to the end of the series so there's some drama but this ties things up nicely! Root and Shaw as the Final Girls™ they deserve to be and more... written to cheer people up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting Game

“So, I was thinking about your thing.”

“My thing?” Root pushes up on her uninjured side, and the hospital bed sheets fall off of her so that Shaw sees the dark tank top she’s wearing, stained with blood, and the bandages of bloody gauze that trails around her stomach. Root gasps then falls back down onto her pillows in pain.

“I didn’t know what was real.” 

Root chuckles soft and quiet. Her eyes looking into Shaw’s with her usual fondness. The pain seems to make them shinier, easier to fall into.

“And you said everything was just—”

“Shapes.”

“ _Root._ ” Shaw warns.

Root’s lips twist up into a knowing grin. She wants to move again but she can’t and that’s somehow reassuring to Shaw. Her face looks paler than usual too and Shaw thinks it must be from blood loss, from driving Harold to safety even after she’d taken a serious amount of blood loss. Shaw got to the hospital and Root was a very, very lucky gal. _Shaw’s a universal donor_. She would have left before Root had woken up but they were still connected. No, like literally connected. But the sting in her arm was nothing compared to the barely dulled-down pain of Root’s serious gunshot wounds, so she can’t complain.

“You know,” Shaw’s eyes drop down to the blood dripping through the IV, “I told you about the simulations but… I didn’t tell you everything.”

Root nods, slowly. The glazed-over look vanishes and is replaced with concern. Maybe with the bad memory of Shaw telling her just how many times she’d sacrificed herself for Root in her head.

“That’s okay.” Root whispers. Her fingers move on the bed, they almost touch Shaw’s. She can feel them there and Shaw suddenly feels too tired to talk or to explain what she wants to say. _That life isn’t just shapes and simulations_.

 

So instead she shows her. Shaw moves her fingers up and lets both of theirs touch. _Just barely_. But so Root can feel her skin against her own.

_Not a simulation_.

“Mmmm…” Root’s eyelashes flutter. She looks peaceful, crooked up into the small bed frame with Shaw’s blood tracing up through her veins. Real. Realer than real. But this is Root, so the softest touch of fingers gets leaned into. Suddenly Shaw feels those nails tracing over her palms in light circles. Connecting them even more deeply.

It’s too deep, really. Shaw feels like it’s all too much. There’s still blood and war and Finch, Harold and Fusco. There’s still a machine with too much power and now Root’s voice. Root telling her to hunt down and kill— _search_ , and _destroy_. 

‘You’re a god now you know’, she wants to say. But Root looks small here. And sleepy.

 

Shaw is tired of fighting.

 

 

 

Root tries to get discharged early from the hospital but Doctor Shaw won’t allow it, instead she releases her into her own care a few days later than normal and together they go back to Harold’s safe house. Shaw props up a few pillows and forces Root onto the bed, a suggestive gleam hitting the ex-hacker’s eyes when she does it. She’s barely got two hands pressed to her shoulder when she hears, “I love it when you play doctor.” And Root’s knowing eyes on hers. Because she seems to love being ironic. Shaw ‘humphs’ at that, then signals for Bear to come lay at her feet on the bed. 

He jumps on then lays down dutifully.

“Good boy.”

She turns to leave but Root whispers her name.

“What Root?”

She looks so fragile and weak and it makes everything grip tight and sick and fast into Shaw’s stomach, so she turns back around and lets her own name be spilled out over and over. She sits on the edge of the bed and tries to be clinical even as Root’s wet eyes are _begging_ her not to go.

“Sssh, Shh, It’s okay. Root. Ssh.” 

She doesn’t leave (not even to bring her a glass of water for her pills.) Root dry swallows them down, elegant throat bobbing, and then leans back against Harold’s ridiculously big pillows to stare at Shaw. UNREPENTANT STARING. Shaw’s pretty sure this is the most time she’s spent alone with another person in _months._ Samaritan wasn’t really all about the chitchat. 

Shaw watches Bear inch up the bed then put his big, fluffy face into Root’s palms. He licks them then goes to stare into her eyes and Root smiles back.

“You two got close, huh?” 

Root laughs, “We bonded over missing you.”

 

Shaw doesn’t say anything. She remembers coming home after seeing Root in the park for the first time in months. Remembers Bear wagging over to sniff her and check that she’s real. Shaw reached out her palms and let him sniff, then he came and laid in her arms while she slept. Bone-tired and scared shitless that she was going to sleepwalk-murder all of her friends.

_Friends_.

 

Root gives Bear a big, wet kiss on the snout. Root laughs then side-eyes Shaw, probably up to something. “Plus, being around him…it helped.”

_Right_. The search.

“You two have a lot in common after all,” Root says louder, “You both like to know who’s in charge…”

“Shut it, Root. Or I’m leaving.”

Root’s eyebrows perk up, her hands rubbing all along the edges of Bear’s collar and ears. She leans her head down to rests hers against his and then she just _stares and stares and stares_.

 

 

 

A day later and a wobbly, injured Root is sneaking up behind her. Being ridiculously chivalrous even in her disturbed (although when isn’t root disturbed?) state to push open doors for her, and retrieve objects for her.

Every time Shaw chides her (and she’s really beginning to sound like her own mother to her own ears—she even barked out a ‘stop!’ in Farsi before she could think about it) But each time, Root just gives her a sheepish but knowing smile. Even in her weakened form, she is still full of dangerous, idle, energy. Who knows what that sort of freedom is going to allow Root do?

Shaw redresses her wounds and Root hisses between her teeth. “You sort of enjoy this kind of thing, don’t you?” She teases.

“You must be feeling better then.” Shaw says, circumventing the verbal foreplay any way she can. But it feels like a _challenge._ Come and play, Shaw.

“Being around you always makes me feel better.” Her eyes looking into Shaw’s with devotion. Annoying, annoying devotion.

 

Fusco walks in on Shaw on the bed, and shoving Root’s t-shirt off—

 

(she was tired of the purposefully too slow ‘strip tease’ Root liked to reenact _each goddamned time_ she had to check wounds)

 

—then let out a long whistle.

 

“You girls sure are feisty.”

 

 

But Shaw’s glad she’s injured, it evens the playing field. But the pick-up lines have been increasing lately. And she doesn’t have anywhere to send injured Root off to. Shaw goes to open one of the windows to let more air in, she wonders if she should take a crack at her old place again. She liked it. It was sparse but had one of the things she misses most of all right now—silence.

But since she can’t have that, she opens the fridge and grabs two beers, then shuts it behind her with a heeled boot. Shaw traipses back to injured Root and puts one of the cold beers in her hands. Root smiles.

_She’s always smiling now_. And/or staring.

Neither one was something Shaw could really deal with. Root breaths like it still hurts her to then nurses the beer to her lips. Shaw watches the cool glass, her mouth, her throat working as she drinks—she should NOT be staring like this but SHE IS. Shaw’s brain is a problem. She peeks back down at her own drink and tries to distract herself.

Dammit Root.

 

“Is this real, Sameen?” Root asks her, eyes light and curious. She feels an elbow jostle into her side, not poking too much but just touching. Reminding her that she’s not currently alone.

“You’re a real pain in the ass.”

“No.” Root prods her again, voice worried, “You can tell, right?”

“Sometimes… when I wake up. It’s hard at first.”

 

“But right now?”

“This is real.”

 

Root nods. She laces their fingers together again and looks like a guilty kid doing it. Like she’s knows she’s not supposed to touch Shaw but just can’t help it.

Shaw allows it for a little while then slips her hand away.

 

 

 

 

 

Getting her out of the hospital was easy, getting her to stay in the safe house isn’t.

Shaw packs up her bag to go. She has a war to fight. Root wants to come. Root is nowhere near ready to come, Shaw blinks and pictures the worst, pictures Samaritan getting to her too. _No_. 

 

So she does what Root’s done to her about a thousand times…

 

Sedates her.

 

 

She comes back bloody and alone, her cheeks blazing with fresh cuts and bruises. She barely feels Root’s hands coming to touch them, to grip her cheeks, she barely hears the words. She blinks, she blinks, she blinks. Her brain is going fuzzy.

 

_Real, or not real?_

 

_Real?_

 

She hears the machine in her earwig and that’s it. With Root’s voice because Root and Harold let TM decide. John is dead. Fusco is dead. Harold is dead.

Those arms move unapologetically to wrap her up, tight and close. She feels Root’s hammering heart against her own chest, feels her warm skin pressed against her cold skin, feels the soft cheek nestling against her and warm tears going down Root’s eyes onto her own body.

Shaw barely moves though.

 

Root doesn’t want to let her go but Shaw buckles out of her arms and goes to lay down. She closes her eyes. _Is this real?_

 

_Are they really—_

 

_What_

 

_did_

 

_she_

 

_do_

 

_wrong?_

 

 

———————-

 

 

Bear licks her face until her eyes open.

 

Root comes scampering across the wooden floors, barefoot and still hurt and still healing, eyes wet with tears for their friends. She feels a cool towel over her head and then hands at her sides, checking the wounds she must have attended to when Shaw had passed out.

_Yeah. Samaritan shot her a few times_. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care.

It hurts but she doesn’t care.

“Fusco’s not dead.” Root tells her. “You said he was, but I-I checked. He’s at St. John’s.” 

 

“But—”

 

“ _This is real_ ,” Root grips her hands so tight it hurts, “You were right about John and—“ Root’s voice breaks off. Too chocked down with emotions and tears.

“I’ll take you to him—” Root whispers fervently.

 

They go and they see Fusco. His son’s already there and so are many uniformed police officers. They give Dt. Riley one helluva send off, A police officer’s burial rites and Shaw isn’t crying. No. Because it’s not real. 

 

Fusco is crying. He wears his uniform proudly under the sun, his face broken with tears. Root is crying. She still flinches when she moves, when the moving digs into her sides but her voice breaks into raspy, terrible sobs when they bring out the photo of Harold. Harold dies a _no one_. A _nobody_. Just an IT guy. At least John had a _title,_ Shaw thinks. Her two friends. The people she couldn’t save.

The people who gave her _everything_.

 

Shaw sits on the floor with Bear later and tells him, “You don’t know either, do you? You don’t know he’s dead. You don’t know about Harold.”

 

_Bear doesn’t know what’s real_.

 

Shaw shrugs next time she sees Root and Root asks her how she’s feeling. They stand in stiff silence and then Root disappears for a while. Shaw does too. She brings Bear and a bottle of scotch to the park and sits above everyone else on the bridge, stares down at the happy and very-much-alive people who are oblivious to superhuman brain technologies that call themselves ‘god’, masquerade as heroes when really they are brutal rulers. The worst kinds of authorities. Unruled and unkempt.

Shaw shakes and shakes and then drinks until she vomits in someone’s kiddie pool. Bear eventually leads her away.

 

It’s bad when a dog is saying ‘you’ve had enough.’

 

————————–

 

 

“Real.” Root says in lieu of a greeting. And then hands are tangling in her hair and a mouth rushes to meet hers, kissing her brutally. Unruled and unkempt.

Godless and terrifying.

“ _You sedated me,”_ Root kisses her again. Angrily but with something else tearing through, and Shaw feels it. She gasps and pants against the flurry of touches that she’s unused to, that her body has been rejecting since she left the table Samaritan strapped her down to. _“You could have died_. _I wouldn’t have been able to tell you goodbye even—_ ” 

Wet-shiny eyes stare at her with a hint of madness.

The warm lips leave her own and Shaw is surprised. But the hands haven’t. They force her head upwards, painful but in the way that hits Shaw’s stomach in a good way. She doesn’t like pain—she loves it. She loves being surprised, she loves not knowing what’s going to happen next even if it takes murder, drugs, or alcohol to bring in those sensations for her. Luckily for her, Root brings her own sort of high. 

Shaw wants _more and more and more and more_.

“What do you want from me, Root?” She asks because she’s confused and the wild look in Root’s eyes isn’t helping in the matter.

She’s mad that Root wasn’t there to die for Harold? Or for John? Well, Shaw’s not mad about it. Shaw thinks that was a damn good call.

Root says nothing, just covers her mouth and cries. 

 

Shaw doesn’t know what to do, she puts on the leather jacket she stole from Root the night she came back (after the simulations she couldn’t just let it go for some reason) and then leaves. She misses them too, Shaw thinks, _I miss them too_.

 

The Machine talks to her even when Root can’t, but it’s Root’s voice haunting her in just slightly different octaves and derived of the feeling, the passion, the crazy energy of any single conversation she’s ever had with Root face to face.

 

But she busts kneecaps, she saves lives.

 

_for them. for them._

————————–

 

 

Root meets her a week later. Shaw helps her remove her stitches. The second her gloved hands are done and trying to put the equipment away, Root’s hands are on hers.

“I need you.” 

Shaw wants to laugh. How ironic, how fucking ironic. Why are they like this? She does laugh, she can’t stop herself, it pinches into her sides because it’s painful to think about how messed up their lives are. Even at this— intertwined and fucked up. 

 

“ _Sameen,_ ” She begs.

 

Shaw leans over and kisses her lightly at first, getting blood on her cheek. Root moans and Shaw feels it pull through her. Then they’re kiss goes rough, and Shaw reminds herself that they’re both a little desperate and not thinking clearly at the moment and this is a probably a really really bad idea. But then Root’s biting on her lips and she tastes her own blood and _they’re both moaning_ and hands are under her shirt, circling her skin and she feels faint-headed, cannot believe how much she really wants this. Root is warm and close and saying filthy shit in her ear. 

_She needs this_ too. Shaw realizes. Not just Root needs this, she also needs this. 

She’s helpless really when Root’s biting her and touching her. And saying _I want this. Want you, Sameen. Always—I’ve always wanted you—_ Shaw wishes that she knew what to say, but she doesn’t. So she stands up and strips off her clothes, watching Root watch her do it.

Pain is so much easier to navigate than, uh, whatever this is.

Shaw tugs off her tank top but when her hands reach out to undo the buttons of her jeans, Root jumps up and her hands trace over Shaw’s to still them, she leans into her ear and says, thick-voiced, “Allow me, Sameen.”

Shaw shivers. Root tugs them down, her lips momentarily leaving the side of Shaw’s ears, and following her own movements going down.

 

There’s a lot of yelling, a lot of bruising and biting and fucking. 

 

And the best part: they don’t have to think about anyone but themselves for a while.

 

 

————————– —————————-

 

Shaw rubs Bear’s belly. He squirms in her lap then licks at her hands. 

She feels a certain someone behind her, creeping over her back to press kisses to her neck. 

 

_“Root.”_

 

“I’m jealous of a dog.” 

Shaw laughs, accepts the warm coffee mug. Presses it to her lips but keeps petting Bear.

“I’m jealous of a machine.”

Root leans against the back of the sofa, still hanging near, and sips from her own mug, a smirk on her lips. “I guess we’re even then.”

“Uh, sure.” _No, a pet is more manageable than a robot girlfriend any day_. 

 

“Fusco says there’s a new number.”

 

Shaw nods.

 

“I’m impersonating a candy striper today.”

Shaw’s brow furrows. _Seriously?_

 

Root smiles then comes over, fingertips lightly brushing over Shaw’s nose then trailing down to rest on her lips, she sing-songs: “But, not as fun as when you were a stripper—“

“Fuck you, Root.” Shaw groans. The press of fingers against her mouth feels good. Root rests her thumb on the bottom one and her top finger against Shaw’s jaw. She leans down, almost-touching their mouths together but not. 

_She really fucking loves to tease you_ , Shaw thinks pityingly to herself. Fusco would be coughing and sputtering his coffee right now, saying ‘you’re so whipped, hot shot!’ and laughing his ass off at her own expense.

(Thank god he wasn’t there for stripper night though.)

“The machine’s a goddamned perv,” Shaw grumbles. Root looks _delighted_. Her eyes still on Shaw’s lips, like Shaw hasn’t been coming in her ear every single damned night for the last few weeks. Like she still needs permission or acknowledgment or whatever.

“You have to lead the peewee soccer team across town though so I won’t see you,” She pouts, “ _All day_.” 

 

Hint taken. Hint received.

 

Shaw smirks then stands up a little taller, barely an inch from Root’s mouth now. TWO CAN PLAY THIS GAME. Coach Shaw knows better than anyone.

 

“Can’t wait to shoot some kneecaps then.” 

“Oh, you can wait alright.” Root makes Bear scoot before plopping into Shaw’s lap and wrapping her arms around her neck. “Because I need to borrow you for something first.”

“It’d be a shame to keep Fusco waiting,” Shaw moves at the last second.

Root lets out a small noise of frustration. Then threads their fingers together quickly and grinds her hips down to keep Shaw in place.

“Fusco loves waiting.”

“No, I think he dislikes it when I’m late.”

“Sameen Shaw, if you don’t fuck me right this second, I’m going to make _you_ go as the candy striper.” 

“You win.”

Shaw gives in. But it’s ultimately for the best.


End file.
